Dude, It's Only Coffee! 12

 Caffeine.  Friend or foe?  But who can know for sure?  There was a time when it was considered dangerous, toxic, carcinogenic and damaging to heart health.  Apparently it is not as addictive as I thought it was, but if you drink a lot of coffee you are of course going to be more vulnerable to addiction.  It happened to me.  Back in the days of diners, table service and relatively cheap refills and bottomless cups, I found myself drinking at times up to twenty cups or more a day.  Now I am down to about three every day and it's often half decaf, but with one little caveat.  The cups are much bigger, and these days I like my coffee a lot stronger than when I was younger.  I also still hold that it is addictive, maybe not up in the league of heroin or nicotine, but that is how they keep us buying their product.

The health benefits and health risks would appear to balance each other.  It can, in moderate consumption, help stave off certain cancers, improve memory functions, alertness, and open up neural pathways and synapses.  But too much can wreak havoc on your nervous system and possibly your heart health, so it is buyer beware.

What I find a bit rich is just how much we in our pampered and privileged First World Paradise tend to so obsess over such little details about caffeine and health without giving any concern at all to the crappy working conditions, low pay and absolute squalor that the pickers and other workers on coffee farms in Brazil and elsewhere.  Unless you are sure that your coffee is fair trade, you really should not be drinking or buying it.  Otherwise you are, through your own sybaritic impulses, contributing to human rights abuses and human misery.  At least if you can afford to buy fair trade.  Now, doesn't that make you feel better, Gentle Reader?

But this is what is so problematic about middle class consumers, formerly known, in a more quaint era,  as the Bourgeoisie.  They are so caught up in their need to consume, purchase, and gratify themselves, that nothing else appears to exist for a lot of us.  We really are hollow, shallow, without soul or spirit.  A real collective waste of DNA.   Even the nitpicking fuss that is made over terroir, or whether your dark roast has been properly brewed, or if your light roast is delicate enough for your neurasthenically delicate pallet.  And heaven help the poor barista who accidentally serves you dark roast instead of light, or worse, espresso! No consideration whatever given to the people who picked and roasted your goddam beans.

Yes, we are that bad.  We really should be ashamed of ourselves.  We really should be ashamed of our lack of shame.  We should be ashamed!